


Second Chances

by linndechir



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Getting Back Together, M/M, Tevinter Imperium (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-10 18:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20532947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: Cullen is sent to Tevinter as the Inquisition's ambassador. As delighted as Dorian is to see him again, he reminds himself that he shouldn't get too used to it.





	Second Chances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).

“Is all this really necessary?” Cullen asked for what was maybe the third time since Dorian had arrived, but he held still while Dorian adjusted his collar.

“You are the Inquisition's ambassador, my dear Commander,” Dorian said, not quite patiently, but he was enjoying himself so thoroughly that he hardly minded Cullen's half-hearted complaints. Dressing a handsome man wasn't quite as much fun as undressing him, but it wasn’t a bad consolation price. He'd sent his own tailor to make some appropriate clothes for Cullen – what bit of them was to be seen underneath his new armour – and the result had been more than worth the money. And Cullen hadn’t objected when Dorian had insisted on picking him up before the season’s most important social event, the large party thrown to celebrate the return of the Magisterium to session after everyone had spent the summer on their country estates, away from Minrathous’ unbearable heat. It was still quite warm, but pleasantly so now, though Dorian couldn’t fathom walking around in armour in this weather. He supposed Cullen was used to it.

Everyone worth knowing would be there tonight, from the Archon to the Divine, and Dorian would make damn sure that Cullen didn’t show up looking like the barbarian they all thought he was.

“If Lady Montilyet were here, she'd agree with me,” he said, still fussing with the fabric, though at this point it was half an excuse to keep touching Cullen. “Appearances matter, especially in Tevinter.”

Dorian made half a step back to survey his handiwork – the new armour gleamed, the Inquisition's sword and eye emblazoned on Cullen's chest, the fabric peeking out from underneath crimson with quite tasteful gold embroidery at the sleeves and collar, dark fur playing around the Commander's shoulders, as much to emphasise their breadth as to add a certain exotic Fereldan element, and never mind that the fur was finer than what any Fereldan other than a king would wear. Cullen peered down at himself, sceptically, but he hadn’t really seemed to _mind_ any of this. No man spent that much time on his hair if he wasn't vain, even if he liked pretending that he didn’t care for such things. And he would have been far more decisive about his complaints if he'd genuinely objected to the tailor's designs.

“You look magnificent, if you don't mind my saying,” Dorian said. And Cullen did – the fresh air and the sun on the journey north had given him a healthy tan, and he'd long stopped looking as gaunt and sickly as during the worst of his withdrawal. Dorian still remembered Cullen waking up in cold sweat during the few nights they'd actually slept side by side, remembered him trembling and so nauseous he'd sometimes been unable to eat all day. But he also remembered that smile on Cullen's face – flattered but a little bashful, as if he wasn't quite used to people complimenting him the way Dorian did. The same smile he'd smiled when Dorian had kissed him, or pushed him back against his desk, or –

Not the time to think about this. Not that there was ever a time for that. Nothing had happened between them since Cullen had arrived in Minrathous, serious and stern-faced like a man headed to a funeral right up until he’d seen Dorian again and smiled that damned smile. Of course Dorian hadn’t expected anything to happen. What they'd shared back at Skyhold had been a diversion during war times, a way to help Cullen deal with his pain and Dorian with the cold. A meaningless little tryst between friends, because Dorian liked to think they still were friends despite everything else they'd done together. It had been delightful, really – Cullen was handsome and kind and surprisingly passionate once he’d got past his initial hesitation – but Dorian was fortunately not the age anymore where he easily mistook tenderness in bed for a sign of serious affection. Still, perhaps it was better if they didn't fall back into old habits. Dorian's reputation was quite thoroughly ruined in that regard, but Cullen would have it hard enough time getting any respect in Tevinter – as a foreigner, and worse as a soporatus. There was no need to add a scandal with an unspeakably handsome Altus to that.

“You're too kind, Dorian,” Cullen said, and when Dorian opened his mouth to insist it was nothing, Cullen took his hand and squeezed it gently. “No, you are. You have been nothing but welcoming since I've arrived, introducing me to people, showing me around the city … Your hospitality is what makes this place bearable.”

Dorian felt something twinge in his chest and quickly freed his hand, ostensibly so he could wave it in dismissal.

“Shush, Commander, don't think I can't tell you're insulting my home again just because you're flattering me in the same breath. I'm sure I can make you enjoy Tevinter itself as well. In time.”

“I doubt that.” Cullen ran a hand through his hair, or tried to before Dorian smacked his hand away so he wouldn't ruin it. Not that dishevelled wasn't a good look on him, but he'd already get propositioned enough as it was. Blond hair as golden as Cullen’s was rare enough in Tevinter that it alone would attract more attention than Cullen probably cared for, even on a man who was less handsome and less politically interesting. 

Cullen let Dorian fuss with his hair – it had grown a bit too long on the road, but Dorian had insisted Cullen not cut it. Longer hair was quite fashionable again, and Cullen’s curled so distractingly around Dorian’s fingers when he brushed it back behind his ear. He felt his own breath catch, because the last time he’d done this, he’d cupped Cullen’s chin and kissed him until they’d both been laughing breathlessly, but now he quickly pulled away – or tried, because Cullen was taking his hand again. The look in his eyes was more serious than Dorian could bear.

“I may not like being in Tevinter, but I am no less glad to see you, Dorian,” Cullen said, seriously, always so dreadfully serious. “Skyhold feels rather empty without you, you know? I’m not the only one who misses having you around, of course, but I –”

He sounded, he looked like he was going to say something terribly stupid, so Dorian quickly freed his hand and interrupted him. 

“We should get going. If we wait much longer, we’ll be rudely late rather than fashionably late, and we’ll also miss out on far too much interesting gossip.”

Dorian busied himself with his own hair, with the rings on his fingers – he hadn’t had any success talking Cullen into jewellery, but hopefully that would pass for charmingly rustic –, did anything at all really to avoid looking at Cullen. He still caught an odd expression on his face out of the corner of his eyes. Something sad almost, sad and resigned. It was probably better not to think too much about that.

* 

The party was a resounding success, which really had to be expected. The food was so delicious even Cullen seemed to genuinely enjoy it despite his permanent discomfort when surrounded by mages and slaves, and most people they talked to seemed for now far more interested in getting on the good side of one of the Inquisitor’s closest advisors than in making dismissive comments about Cullen’s barbaric homeland or, worse, his lack of magical abilities. Cullen didn’t exactly look happy, but he had always been far better at diplomacy and politics than he liked to admit, and he could be quite charming if he set his mind to it. Sending him to Tevinter had seemed like an almost cruel choice to Dorian when he’d first heard about it, but Dorian was starting to think it hadn’t been a bad one. Maybe someone who wasn’t too easily intimidated by arrogant mages was far from the worst candidate.

Unfortunately the party was a success in every way, and in Tevinter no high society event was really complete without an assassination attempt. And what better target was there for that than the new Inquisition ambassador, when certain parts of the Magisterium had hardly been shy about their disapproval of the Imperium “cozying up to the Andrastian Chantry’s pathetic attempt to re-establish its army after they couldn’t control their Templars”, and who of course saw Trevelyan’s decision to send a former southern Templar – a man who’d spent a decade of his life imprisoning mages – as his ambassador as an insulting provocation. Knowing Trevelyan, it probably had been, but that was hardly the point.

The point was that some idiot Magister’s idiot nephew – far enough removed in the family tree for a bit of plausible deniability, of course – took the midnight fireworks to be an excellent opportunity to loosen an admittedly quite impressive lightning bolt at Cullen. Cullen who, even surrounded by more magic than he was used to, sensed it even before Dorian did, but for all that his Templar training still held, without lyrium there wasn’t much he could do about it. Dorian felt him tense beside him, saw his left arm twitch instinctively before it remembered that it wasn’t carrying a shield, and threw up a magical barrier around them both just as Cullen staggered and groaned in pain. 

After that, it all went very fast. The would-be assassin was quickly apprehended – Tevinter was very unforgiving towards unsuccessful assassins –, the host presented his apologies to a wide-eyed Cullen who barely got out a word while Dorian played diplomat for him, and once the excitement had died down, everyone went back to the same intrigues they’d been busy with before, now enriched by the occasional bout of small talk about far more interesting and successful assassinations they’d witnessed in the past. Dorian wasn’t quite in the mood anymore, Cullen still looked shaken, and it was all too easy to make their excuses for an early departure.

Back in Dorian’s carriage, he finally had a moment to look closely at Cullen: his sleeve was singed, but the injury underneath it looked superficial, although Dorian was well aware that it could have been far worse if he’d reacted just a moment later. But while he’d been lucky, Cullen looked like death. He was as pale as he’d been on his worst days in Skyhold, his knuckles were white from grasping his knees like he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking. His eyes were too wide, and he barely reacted when Dorian said his name. Flinched when Dorian reached out to touch his arm instead. 

Initially Dorian had planned to bring him home – the Inquisition had paid for a quite impressive manor in the right part of the city, recently vacated by a disgraced Altus family, because Lady Montilyet knew that an ambassador couldn’t live in some hovel without a roof, no matter how little Cullen himself would have minded that – but now he called out to his driver to take them to his own estate instead. He wasn’t going to leave Cullen alone like this, not when he knew how badly Cullen slept even after better days.

So Dorian took him home, got him a glass of wine Cullen drank probably faster than he should have, and when Cullen’s fingers were shaking too hard to open the clasps of his armour, Dorian stepped in and helped him. He’d done this before, maybe half a dozen times, with Cullen’s old armour, but the situation had always been very different. Anticipation, desire, impatience. There had usually been something playful about it, too, teasing each other, Dorian saying the most outrageous things he could think of to make Cullen blush, Cullen saying things that were far too gentle for Dorian’s comfort and then kissing him when Dorian couldn’t think of a witty retort for once. It had been comfortable and exciting at the same time, and a part of Dorian had been relieved to turn his back on Skyhold and Cullen and his treacherous heart always wanting things that were out of reach.

Dorian hadn’t expected anything like that to happen again – obviously not after he’d left the south, unsure if he’d ever see Cullen again, but even when Cullen had first mentioned coming to Tevinter in one of his letters. He’d told himself firmly that it was a thing of the past. But in that moment, the truth that he couldn’t have Cullen any more now than in the months they hadn’t seen each other hit him so hard he needed to take a deep breath to keep his own hands from trembling.

“I hate this place,” Cullen said quietly. He peeled off his ruined new shirt, revealing those scars on his chest and shoulder that Dorian had touched often enough to remember how they felt under his fingertips, his lips.

“And here I thought you quite liked the food,” Dorian said lamely, because he felt like he had to say something. He knew better than to suggest calling a healer in Cullen’s current state, and instead settled for gently dabbing salve on the wound on his arm after he’d cleaned it. It would take time to heal without magic, but it shouldn’t impair him too much in the meantime.

“I hate the magic everywhere, how they use it for everything, like, like breathing,” Cullen went on as if he hadn’t heard him. He hated having spells cast on him more than anything, Dorian knew, and he didn’t need to know details about Kinloch Hold to imagine why.

“You won’t have to stay here for long, you know?” Dorian said softly. His voice was rougher than he would have liked. Cullen didn’t belong here, even less so than Dorian had ever belonged in the south. There was no place they both belonged, not now any more than back then.

Cullen finally looked up from whatever spot at the wall he’d been blindly staring at.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know why the Inquisitor thought it was a good idea to send you, but there’s no reason he can’t send someone else, sooner or later. A mage maybe. He even said he’d love to visit Tevinter himself one day, so who knows? There certainly won’t be any need for you to stay here for longer than necessary, not if you hate this place so much.” It stung, as always, that hatred everyone in the south had for his home, but he couldn’t bring himself to blame Cullen for it right now. No man would feel too fondly about a country that tried to assassinate him less than a week after he’d arrived.

“I’m not going anywhere, Dorian.” There it was again, that unbearable seriousness in his eyes. “I’m not going to run away at the first unpleasantness, I’m not going to neglect my duties to the Inquisition just because I don’t _like_ it here. I didn’t like Kirkwall either.”

“Now that’s an unfair comparison,” Dorian said automatically, but to his surprise Cullen actually laughed a little, as shaky as it was.

“Maybe.” They were still standing close, Dorian’s hand hovering above Cullen’s elbow like he didn’t quite dare to touch his bare skin. Cullen’s hair had become unruly again, a few curls tumbling into his face. Despite knowing better, Dorian reached up to run his fingers through them, and his breath caught when Cullen leant his head ever so slightly into the touch. Kaffas, but Dorian had missed him – everything about this still felt so familiar, like it had been no more than a week since they’d last spent an evening playing chess and drinking wine until they tumbled into bed together.

“The Inquisitor didn’t _make_ me come here, Dorian. I volunteered,” Cullen said. His voice was quiet, as if this was some kind of dark secret. Dorian stared at him in confusion.

“Why would you do that? You would have known you’d hate it here … Please tell me this isn’t some ridiculous plan to punish yourself.”

“What? No.” Cullen shook his head. When Dorian pulled back his hand, Cullen caught his wrist and pressed Dorian’s palm against his cheek. “Why did you think I came? How many reasons could I possibly have to come to Tevinter, of all places?”

Suddenly it all felt like too much, every sensation heightened, the rasp of Cullen’s stubble under Dorian’s palm, the heat of his body, that warm, clean smell, cheap soap and the herbal teas Cullen still drank against his headaches, and those bright amber eyes who always looked at Dorian in ways that didn’t bear thinking about. And Dorian had tried his damnedest to put it all out of his mind – the expression on Cullen’s face when Dorian had left Skyhold all those months ago, how he’d looked like he desperately wanted to say something and didn’t dare to, or maybe didn’t know how.

He must have been quiet for too long, because Cullen swallowed and said, “If I am not welcome … if I misunderstood, then I … then I won’t mention this again, and I will stay here for as long as the Inquisition needs me to, until a better replacement can be found. I did not mean to mistake your kindness for something else.”

If Dorian had been a better man, a stronger man, he would have steeled himself and insisted that Cullen had most certainly misread the situation. That there was nothing for him to find in Tevinter, except death if the next assassin got more lucky, and that fond memories of their time together in Skyhold was all they would ever share. But Dorian had never been a particularly good man, and he’d certainly never managed to be selfless. The thought of Cullen leaving – for good, no doubt, into a life in which Dorian would never feature again except in increasingly rare letters over the years, letters that would sooner or later mention a wife or a husband, and children, and all those other things Cullen would most certainly want and not find by Dorian’s side – weighed heavier on Dorian than even his concerns for Cullen’s safety, or the risk of scandal, or the fear that Cullen would only resent him if he stayed in Tevinter.

“You didn’t misunderstand,” Dorian all but whispered, not able to meet his eyes. He brushed his thumb over the scar on Cullen’s lip, retraced it as gently as he knew how. “And you are always welcome.”

“Oh.” Dorian could feel Cullen’s smile more than he saw it. “I was beginning to wonder. You’ve been … different here than in Skyhold.”

“Well, in Skyhold people certainly hated me, but I don’t think anyone would have taken our indiscretion as an additional reason to try and assassinate us. Are you really quite sure you _want_ to add to people’s sceptical opinion of you?”

“Considering what they already think of me, I very much doubt it’ll make a difference, Dorian.”

His cheeks were flushed again, driving away some of that sickly pallor, and he’d cocked his head just a little to the side, the way he always did just before he – kissed Dorian, a slow and gentle thing like there were more things he’d had to say. It shook Dorian to the core, so shortly after watching him escape death by nothing but a hair’s breadth, and all he could do was sigh into the kiss, leaning into him when Cullen wrapped his uninjured arm around Dorian’s shoulders. They stayed like that for a little while, and Dorian didn’t think they’d ever kissed and then not proceeded to fuck on the nearest surface. 

Cullen still felt too tense in his arms, his muscles trembling slightly, a sheen of sweat back on his forehead even though he’d splashed some cold water on his face when they’d come home. 

“You look like death warmed over,” Dorian said. “Come to bed with me, and –”

“I really don’t think I’d be, er, good company right now,” Cullen interrupted, the flush on his face deepening.

“Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, Commander,” Dorian said sharply, but he was smiling, and Cullen laughed that embarrassed little laugh that had already made something in Dorian’s insides twist even back in Skyhold. “You need sleep. And a bath in the morning. And then we’ll consider what to do about the people who think they can attack you and get away with it. And when we’ve done that –”

Dorian interrupted himself because he didn’t know what would happen then. They would probably fuck on the nearest surface eventually, but saying that would have felt crass. As fantastic as the sex had always been, Dorian knew Cullen hadn’t come to Tevinter for that. Once they were done making sure that the next person would think twice about threatening the Inquisition’s ambassador, Dorian would have to deal with other things he was far less comfortable talking, or even thinking about. Maybe he’d even have to deal with it earlier than that.

But Cullen was alive, and with him, and had apparently every intention for staying for as long as Dorian managed not to make a mess of it. Which Dorian certainly would, but until then he had every intention of savouring each moment of this.

Cullen smiled, the scar pulling at his lip, and even exhausted and bone-weary he was so handsome Dorian could barely stop looking at him. His hand was warm on the small of Dorian’s back, even through the fabric of his robes, and at some point in the past few minutes he had finally stopped shaking.

“Yes?” Cullen prompted, a teasing note in his voice. Dorian looked away again.

“Oh, let’s get you to bed before I embarrass myself utterly.”

Dorian couldn’t sleep half the night, lying awake in his bed and watching Cullen sprawled out beside him, his brow furrowed even in his sleep, his body twitching occasionally in whatever dreams plagued him, but he always quieted down when Dorian ran his fingers through his hair or over his shoulders. For a brief moment Dorian wondered if he couldn’t sleep because he _was_ asleep and this was a dream, some cunning desire demon’s phantasm of Cullen coming to Tevinter for Dorian’s sake, even if he needed the veneer of duty to let himself, but eventually sleep took Dorian as well, and his last thought as his head fell wearily against Cullen’s shoulder was that this had to be real after all.


End file.
